Continuation - Discussion of the Amanda Knox case

[tsig]

Page 40, but yes, you're right and I'm wrong. I apologise. But at least you'll concede that the Massei report is either badly written or badly translated, when it says

"Visiting the house in Via della Pergola, he had seen Rudy there two or three times, and on these occasions Amanda and Meredith were also there;"

The subject of this sentence is clearly Marco, so the sub-clause "visiting the house in Via della Pergola" should apply to Marco too - and not Guede. It was that which led to my embarrassing mistake

Still, actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, eh?

The hilited and bolded sentences don't go to gather.

 

[shuttlt]

I recall that Luciano Ghirga, Amanda's attorney, gave a figure of 1/3, presumably derived from his knowledge and experience as a practicing lawyer.

Clearly it depends on what reference class of cases you look at; but it also seems clear that, however it is measured, the rate is significantly higher than in the U.S. or U.K. (and, I assume, Australia), which is enough information for the purposes of my earlier comment.

I don't intend this to be taken as an argument against your earlier comment, but presumably if appeals in the US or UK were retrials of the case to anything like the same degree as in Italy, the reversal rate would be considerably higher.

 

[komponisto]

I don't intend this to be taken as an argument against your earlier comment, but presumably if appeals in the US or UK were retrials of the case to anything like the same degree as in Italy, the reversal rate would be considerably higher.

I don't doubt it.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Is this a logical argument based on facts?

Now you see it depends on the circumstances, doesn't it? How many people commit murder, almost nobody... can we go home now? Nobody is a killer!

This discussion isn't going to get anywhere if you deliberately misinterpret me and post non sequiturs instead of intelligent responses. I'll ask the question again:

What percentage of people like Amanda do you think would report a murder if they saw one?

Now later on you appear to be hinting at the idea that under some scenario you have in mind it does in fact make sense for someone like Amanda to join in on a crime rather than report it and seek help. This could be the case, but we aren't going to know unless you present your scenario. Then we can just figure out what we think the likelihood of Amanda pitching in on a murder in that scenario is, figure out how likely that scenario is to have occurred, and adjust our estimates of probability accordingly.

Again, I'm not really aware of much information on her that can be said to predate the murder and therefore is certain not to be influenced by an awareness of the impact it will have on the case one way or another. My neighbours daughter is a nightmare, but if she was in this situation I might well keep that to myself unless asked about it in court. Why would I? It would make things awkward as hell for one thing.

Then take my word for it that in the length of time I have been reading about this case I have found literally nothing by way of information about Amanda that predates Meredith Kercher's murder and gives any grounds for thinking her likely to commit a disorganised sex murder, and plenty of evidence that she was unlikely to do so.

All of the echo chamber nonsense about her claimed pathological behaviour dates from after the killing as far as I have been able to determine.

That seems to be based on your life experience rather than any facts. Quibbling I know since I share your belief that the number is low, but still....

I think that if these things ever happened we'd know about it from the criminological literature.

Anyway, whose to say that we are talking about a scenario where Amanda and Rudy are sitting there doing needlepoint and listening to Brahms when Rudy bursts in waving a knife (see, I can add details to a scenario to make it seem silly as well)? What percentage of young people call the police no matter what when things get ********** up? Do honest honours students never accidentally run people over after a few drinks and drive away without telling anyone? Anyway, we are already moving into an argument about who thinks what is plausible, which is my point.

How does any of this make its way into a relevant scenario? Nobody's accusing Amanda of running Meredith over in a car and driving away, they're accusing her of ganging up with Rudy Guede and Raffaele Sollecito to sexually assault and murder Meredith. Hit and runs are a documented phenomenon that happen reasonably regularly. Three-way disorganised sex killings like the Massei scenario either never happen at all or happen vanishingly rarely. A rational person differentiates between those two cases.

Yes, I agree that my gut tells me that is unlikely, weirder things have happened, but I personally would be extremely surprised if this is what happened.

So in terms of a scenario for this crime what exactly would not surprise you if it happened, and why would it not surprise you?

Yes, I would require some quite strong evidence to believe the scenario you just described. Again though, this isn't a logical, or methematical argument. This is your gut and my gut, and your life experience and my life experience agreeing on one of the many possible narratives.

One of the things that has kept coming to my mind is Chappaquiddick. Good people from good backgrounds who know right from wrong do not always call the police when it matters. Sometimes their first instinct is to run, or try to avoid the unavoidable fallout of something that has just happened even though any fool can see it is only going to make things worse. My gut tells me that nice people, from good backgrounds are perfectly capable of not calling the police if they are afraid that what they will have to tell the police will reflect badly on them and they imagine there is half a hope in hell of not having to own up to anything.

The parallels are inexact to say the least - running away after someone dies when you make a driving error is not a very close parallel to keeping silent for three years after someone else murders a friend.

Again, your gut tells you that we should be able to find accounts of her doing depraved things to squirrels (or something similar) if this was what happened. I'm happy for you, or me or anyone else to use their instinct about what is likely and what isn't. My point was that contrary to what had been posted, that is, perfectly ligitimately, what we are all doing. A lot of the posts, Halides's examples of other cases, are challenges to peoples gut instinct more than they are logical arguments and/or facts.

No, seriously, no. This is wrong and you should stop saying it.

It's a matter of criminological fact that most sex murders of young women are committed by young men, alone, with troubled pasts. It's not a matter of instinct or intuition, it's a factual claim about how the world is.

Now that claim might be wrong: Show me a study showing that in fact 50% of sex murders of young women are committed by other young women, who use their sexual wiles to lure random local crooks they barely know and boyfriends of six days into participating in the murder with them and I'll say "Fair enough, I learned something today, maybe Mignini isn't the dangerous fruitcake I thought he was".

I don't think such a study exists, of course, but the point is that this is a factual claim that I am more than willing to revise if new information comes in. It has absolutely nothing to do with instinct or intuition, just factual claims that we sometimes have limited information about.

 

[treehorn]

How is Kevin_Lowe's belief actually mistaken, in terms of anticipated experiences, as opposed to his merely declining to use the word "know" to describe the relationship between Amanda and Rudy?

How is he mistaken?!

Read the evidence I've posted above, especially Amanda's own testimony.



PS This is the point in an argument where a rational person would concede that they've made an egregious error.

 

[tsig]

I think it's a pity that you, tsig and lionking aren't sharing more of your no-doubt-important thoughts about this case with us. While it's no doubt a valuable contribution to hover over the thread looking for minor errors to snipe at or excuses to attack me personally, you guys could give so much more. For example, you could give a coherent explanation of your reasons for thinking Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito guilty.

Komponisto asked an excellent question earlier which seems to have slipped past you. I reproduce it here not only for you, but also for tsig and lionking to help you all participate a little more fruitfully:



I would very much like to see your answer(s) to this important question.

My view of the case is that Amanda barely got her butt warm in the seat before she accused an innocent man who just happened to be her boss.

She also says she lied to her lover to go to meet the killer.

 

[treehorn]

It's a matter of criminological fact that most sex murders of young women are committed by young men, alone, with troubled pasts. It's not a matter of instinct or intuition, it's a factual claim about how the world is.

Most.

But not all.

(You go where the evidence takes you.)

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

My view of the case is that Amanda barely got her butt warm in the seat before she accused an innocent man who just happened to be her boss.

She also says she lied to her lover to go to meet the killer.

Do I win the million? I said at the time that I didn't expect a single honest answer to the question Komponisto posed, because my estimation of pro-guilt believers was they they were a self-selecting group of people unable to engage in this kind of reasoning. All we need is for Quadraginta to avoid the question and I'll be three for three.

I would prefer to have been proven wrong. However being proven right is a consolation prize of sorts.

 

[treehorn]

I would prefer to have been proven wrong. However being proven right is a consolation prize of sorts.

I'm glad to hear that you can enjoy the experience of being proven wrong.

It will make it so much easier for you to acknowledge the demise of your 'case theory' based on the (demonstrably false) proposition that 'Amanda did not know Rudy'.

 

[komponisto]

I'm glad to hear that you [Kevin_Lowe] can enjoy the experience of being proven wrong.

It will make it so much easier for you to acknowledge the demise of your 'case theory' based on the (demonstrably false) proposition that 'Amanda did not know Rudy'.

I'm still waiting for you to explain how Kevin's case theory depends on the falsity of any of the statements from Knox's testimony that you quoted above.

 

[treehorn]

All we need is for Quadraginta to avoid the question and I'll be three for three.

Actually, it appears to be the case that you are the one that's avoiding the tough questions, Kevin.

Are you going to keep pretending that your blunder never happened?

 

[tsig]

Do I win the million? I said at the time that I didn't expect a single honest answer to the question Komponisto posed, because my estimation of pro-guilt believers was they they were a self-selecting group of people unable to engage in this kind of reasoning. All we need is for Quadraginta to avoid the question and I'll be three for three.

I would prefer to have been proven wrong. However being proven right is a consolation prize of sorts.

You generally get what you expect.

 

[treehorn]

I don't know whether anyone has been able to find a precise figure. The rumored estimates are that up to 70% of first trial decisions are modified and about 1/2 are reversed.

Citations please.

 

[shuttlt]

This discussion isn't going to get anywhere if you deliberately misinterpret me and post non sequiturs instead of intelligent responses. I'll ask the question again:

What percentage of people like Amanda do you think would report a murder if they saw one?

It depends on the circumstances. If there was no particular cost to them in doing so, I would imagine all but a small fraction.

Now later on you appear to be hinting at the idea that under some scenario you have in mind it does in fact make sense for someone like Amanda to join in on a crime rather than report it and seek help. This could be the case, but we aren't going to know unless you present your scenario. Then we can just figure out what we think the likelihood of Amanda pitching in on a murder in that scenario is, figure out how likely that scenario is to have occurred, and adjust our estimated of probability accordingly.

I hadn't intended to go back to arguing for a narrative of the crime. Somehow we seem to be drifting back in that direction. If you like you can substitute in the one I gave previously, which as I recall was rejected on the grounds that it was inconceivable that a situtaion could develop, leading to the murder, in which Amanda could feel in some way implicated and thereby not call the police. As discussed, it seems to me that that is an intuitive judgement. It's not as if we have studies on this kind of thing.

Then take my word for it that in the length of time I have been reading about this case I have found literally nothing by way of information about Amanda that predates Meredith Kercher's murder and gives any grounds for thinking her likely to commit a disorganised sex murder, and plenty of evidence that she was unlikely to do so.

I vaguely recall a statement from Amanda's mother saying something like that she was concerned about her risk taking and lack of consideration for the consequences of her actions. Did this turn out not to be true? I was going to ask what information you have the predates the murder, but it doesn't matter in relation to what we are arguing. This is part of an argument based on a gut judgement about what we should and should not find if she was involved. This isn't intended to be a criticism that invalidates your judgement, again it relates back to the original post I commented on and what feels to me like some claims that there is a logical argument here that any rational person should be convinced by based purely on logical and factual argument.

All of the echo chamber nonsense about her claimed pathological behaviour dates from after the killing as far as I have been able to determine.

I'm sure it does.

I think that if these things ever happened we'd know about it from the criminological literature.

Again, this is your gut judgement.

How does any of this make its way into a relevant scenario? Nobody's accusing Amanda of running Meredith over in a car and driving away, they're accusing her of ganging up with Rudy Guede and Raffaele Sollecito to sexually assault and murder Meredith. Hit and runs are a documented phenomenon that happen reasonably regularly. Three-way disorganised sex killings like the Massei scenario either never happen at all or happen vanishingly rarely. A rational person differentiates between those two cases.

Can we stop shifting around from one narrative to another. I clearly and repeatedly have talked about whether or not somebody would necessarily have called the police after a murder that they may have had limited direct responsibility for, you have discussed this with me. Now you insist that I must be talking in reference to her sexually assaulting and murdering Meredith. There are multiple narratives of the crime. You can't just decide arbitrarily which one I must be talking about.

So in terms of a scenario for this crime what exactly would not surprise you if it happened, and why would it not surprise you?

It wouldn't surprise me overly if she was involved in some way. I don't intend unless everybody is desperately keen to derail this discussion be coming up with a list of all, or even some, the things that might have happened.

The parallels are inexact to say the least - running away after someone dies when you make a driving error is not a very close parallel to keeping silent for three years after someone else murders a friend.

I'm not altogether sure that she was dead. In any case, how frank was he about this in the three years after the accident? If somehow he had been able to deny being involved, do you think he wouldn't have?

No, seriously, no. This is wrong and you should stop saying it.

No.

It's a matter of criminological fact that most sex murders of young women are committed by young men, alone, with troubled pasts. It's not a matter of instinct or intuition, it's a factual claim about how the world is.

Yes I agree. Applying this to a real case, in the real world though isn't simply a case of logical deduction.

Now that claim might be wrong: Show me a study showing that in fact 50% of sex murders of young women are committed by other young women, who use their sexual wiles to lure random local crooks they barely know and boyfriends of six days into participating in the murder with them and I'll say "Fair enough, I learned something today, maybe Mignini isn't the dangerous fruitcake I thought he was".

50% of sex murders aren't committed by burglars who know their victim, or at least the housemates of their victim either.

I don't think such a study exists, of course, but the point is that this is a factual claim that I am more than willing to revise if new information comes in. It has absolutely nothing to do with instinct or intuition, just factual claims that we sometimes have limited information about.

It is a factual claim, but what is your provisional answer based on?

 

[TomCH]

I don't know whether anyone has been able to find a precise figure. The rumored estimates are that up to 70% of first trial decisions are modified and about 1/2 are reversed.

Yes, but those are convictions in general, and I recall reading that in the case of murder convictions it's much lower, perhaps even an order of magnitude.

 

[Justinian2]

Are you still feeling the effects of New Year's Eve or some such?

"Once at most"?!

I posted Amanda's own testimony for you yesterday: even she will admit to at least two encounters!

From Knox's Trial Testimony June 12, 2009

Re: Smoking Dope with Rudy

CP = Carlo Pacelli (Lumumba's lawyer)
AK= Amanda Knox


CP: You know Rudy Hermann Guede?

AK: Not much.

CP: In what circumstances did you meet him?

AK: I was in the center, near the church. It was during an evening when I met
the guys that lived underneath in the apartment underneath us, and while I
was mingling with them, they introduced me to Rudy.

CP: So it was on the occasion of a party at the house of the neighbors
downstairs?

AK: Yes. What we did is, they introduced me to him downtown just to say
"This is Rudy, this is Amanda", and then I spent most of my time with Meredith,
but we all went back to the house together.

CP: Did you also know him, or at least see him, in the pub "Le Chic", Rudy?

AK: I think I saw him there once.

CP: Listen, this party at the neighbors, it took place in the second half of
October? What period, end of October? 2007?

AK: I think it was more in the middle of October.

..

CP: On the occasion of this party, Miss, was hashish smoked?

AK: There was a spinello that was smoked, yes.

CP: At that time, in October 2007, did you use drugs?

AK: Every once in a while with friends.

[emphasis added]

From Perugia Murder File

http://perugiamurderfile.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=165

I posted page 41 of the Court's judgment for you: regardless of whether the passage is referring to Marco or his friend Giorgio, ONE of them testified in open court that he saw Rudy socializing with Amanda "...two or three times...", one of which was the night that Amanda testified in respect of (dope was smoked at that 'party' in mid October, at time at which Amanda also admitted to smoking dope socially).

So between Giorgio's testimony and Amanda's testimony we have at least 3 or 4 contacts (2-3 at the cottage and 1 at the pub) - at least one of which entailed dope smoking - dating from mid October. (To say nothing of the fact Rudy was a fixture on the basketball court "just steps" from Amanda's cottage.)

Indeed, she'd only known Raffaele since late October and had only seen him for 6 days or so!

The rational thinker would conclude that Amanda and Rudy moved in the same milieu - it was not a case where they were strangers.

The point is not whether or how many joints they shared, the point is that the KNEW one another.

You, sir, claimed that Amanda did not know Rudy. You were wrong.

Your claim that they "met... once at most" is equally wrong.

The evidence, by ANY objective measure does NOT support your argument (which turned on the notion of the 'improbability' of Amanda getting together with 'a crook she did not know').

Are you now claiming that Amanda's own testimony in open court was somehow 'coerced'?!

Are you now claiming that Giorgio Cocciaretto's perjured himself?!

It appears you've taken leave of your senses, sir.

To make a long story short:
1) Guede was introduced to Amanda.
2) Guede smoked a joint in the vicinity of Amanda.

That hardly qualifies one as an accomplice to murder! Again, absence of evidence is...

 

[Justinian2]

If I lived in Amanda's room and was her age, I would be in the same predicament as she is. I would have met the same people, talked to the same police and had my DNA in the same places.

Now that I'm older and trust the police as much as a wolf pack, I would have immediately gotten a lawyer. I would have called a lawyer right after I called the police.

 

[shuttlt]

Kevin,

maybe it would be better if the bra-clasp contamination was the example of gut instinct rather than whether Amanda would have called the cops. The second one seems to muddled up in previous discussions we've had.

 

[quadraginta]

Ah, yes, I did miss it. You're referring to this?



The main problem I see with comparing that to what you would deem an "excuse" by someone arguing innocence for Amanda and Raf is that it entails fabricating an entire scenario out of thin air, right? Or has Casey's defense actually argued this? Wasn't the babysitter found to be a lie, and therefore anyone arguing her innocence couldn't go by your excuse? As far as I know there are no fabricated scenarios in this case being tossed around to explain anything except those from Massei and those who

<snip>

Anthony's defense has argued this. Anthony's defense continues to argue this. It was Anthony's original story, and she has not deviated or wavered from it. The woman who was first uncovered by LE as a Zenaida Gonzales(the nanny) was not ID'd by Casey as the nanny. That Zenaida has a defamation suit going against Casey, and the primary defense against that suit is based on Casey having said , after some waffling, that she was not the right Zenaida Gonzales.

So, to answer your questions ... Yes Anthony and her defense are arguing that the nanny did it, and LE has not proven that there was no nanny, only that the person they first picked out as a possible turned out not to be the one.

Many people, myself among them, believe that the nanny story is implausible. It has not been proven to be impossible.

Reasonable doubt, eh?

 

[Justinian2]

Kevin,

maybe it would be better if the bra-clasp contamination was the example of gut instinct rather than whether Amanda would have called the cops. The second one seems to muddled up in previous discussions we've had.

Women share clothes. Why not share a bra? (Raffaele's DNA would be expected on Amanda's bra or a bra that Amanda once borrowed from Meredith)

The prosecution didn't provide evidence that the bra was never borrowed. Absence of evidence is...